This invention pertains to wheel rim buffers and more particularly to power driven buffers adapted to buff and clean the rims of wheels adapted for the mounting of pneumatic tires.
Automobile wheels adapted to receive pneumatic tires have developed from the days when a tire using an inner tube was mounted on a "demountable" rim which could be removed from the wheel and the rim collapsed so that the tire could be removed to the time when a "drop center" wheel in which the bead of the tire dropped into the center of the rim so that a part of the bead could be stretched over the rim and thus be removed, and now to the airtight drop center rim on which can be mounted a tubeless tire. The needs of each different type of rim may be different.
Specifically, the tubeless tire mounting must be airtight. This requirement extends not only to the construction of the rim but also to the seal between the bead of the tire and the rim. Therefore, irregularities particularly on the edge of the rim may well allow leakage of air between the rim and the bead of the tire. The irregularities may include such foreign matter as rust or mud or the like.
A wire brush may be used to clean rims--particularly used rims held for salvage--of such foreign matter. Such a brush may be power driven. However, hand holding such a driven brush is both tedious and inexact. A mounted, driven brush must be able to buff not only the cylindrical areas such as the bottom of the dropped center and the area on which the bead is seated, but also the edges of those areas, particularly the edge of the rim against which the outer surface of the bead seats.
In order to accomplish that requirement, we provide a device in which the wheel and brush are separately driven although they are mounted on the same stand. We then provide that one of the two--preferably the wheel and its drive means be swiveled relative to the brush and its drive. In this way, the brush enters the rim at an angle to the radial and can buff the edges as well as the cylindrical surfaces.